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How The British Welfare State Excels at Creating Bums
New official figures...show that three quarters of claimants on incapacity benefit are perfectly capable of holding down jobs. no less than £11billion a year is now drained from the public purse by almost two million spongers who are faking their illnesses or disabilities so that they do not have to look for work....
All rigour has evaporated from the system; all morality has disappeared as the state now doles out incapacity benefits to more than 2.6 million people, of whom perhaps 600,000 are genuine claimants. One of the remarkable achievements of modern British social security is to have created more apparently disabled people in this country than the blood-stained carnage of the First World War....
That truth was symbolised recently by the case of Fred Bowers, the 73-year-old who appeared in the last series of Britain’s Got Talent. Despite claiming £70-a-week in disability benefit, he was able to launch into a demanding dance routine which might have sapped the energy of someone half his age....
Columnist Leo McKinstry quotes former Prime Minister Lord Rosebery, who in 1908, said: “The state invites us every day to lean upon it. I seem to hear the wheedling and alluring whisper, ‘Sound you may be. We bid you to be a cripple.”
|10.16.09 @ 12:29PM|#
I would say stealing 70 quid a week that was meant for people who are disabled while being able to get on a reality show for a dance routine, makes that guy a bum on either side of the Atlantic.
Isaac Bartram|10.16.09 @ 1:59PM|#
Yes, and in Australia don't say don't say your going to 'root' for the home team at Saturday's footie game. They will wonder how public copulation will advance your side's fortunes.
|10.16.09 @ 2:14PM|#
Careful what you "prong" too. Seriously though, root is the best synonym for sexual intercourse bar none. It's right up there with "tongue dive" for french kissing.
Isaac Bartram|10.16.09 @ 1:57PM|#
The English would understand your use of the word "bum" in either the two contexts here.
On the other hand an American could very probably look askance at an Englisman asking if he could "bum a fag." Although it could very well confirm what many Americans already think of Englishmen.
In America you need to know a woman quite well before complimenting her on her nice fanny. In England or Australia you would have to know her very very very well.
kinnath|10.16.09 @ 2:08PM|#
It's always fun to see an Aussie say "bugger" in front of a Brit as well.
24AheadDotCom|10.16.09 @ 12:34PM|#
Good to see Reason calling simply for efficiency and an end to fraud instead of the usual fare of calling for those legitimately disabled to be put into workhouses.
Say, any chance that libertarian policies like the one discussed here have anything to do with England's various short and long term problems?
LocoSolo|10.16.09 @ 1:09PM|#
Es bueno ver la razón, simplemente llamando a la eficiencia y el fin al fraude en lugar de la tarifa habitual de convocatoria de aquellos que legítimamente con discapacidad que se ponga en hospicios.
Decir, cualquier posibilidad de que las políticas libertarias, como el que se comenta aquí tienen nada que ver con varios Inglaterra problemas a corto y largo plazo?
|10.16.09 @ 12:35PM|#
From the screenshot, it almost looks like he's breakdancing. How did something like that not make the world news?
There's an ex-navy guy in my judo club that's claiming partial disability from the military. How he hasn't been caught I'll never know.
John Tagliaferro|10.16.09 @ 12:38PM|#
Being partly deaf, or many other disabilities, do not prevent you from performing judo.
|10.16.09 @ 12:40PM|#
True, but he's competing at a fairly high level - about to make shodan. I should also point out that he works out at an MMA gym a couple of days a week as well.
|10.16.09 @ 12:44PM|#
So...I've see stories of people getting nailed for fraud for much less. And with a much lower profile.
John Tagliaferro|10.16.09 @ 2:08PM|#
But the dude is like a Navy Ninja or something maaaan! Jinja will crunch his hand and the dime as soon as he thinks of it.
|10.16.09 @ 2:31PM|#
Well the way he put it to me: "The government soaks us, why not try to get some of it back?" Obviously I can't really argue with that. Besides, I consider him a friend and I've learned a lot from him.
|10.16.09 @ 12:38PM|#
"Rosebery is reputed to have said that he had three aims in life: to win the Derby, to marry an heiress, and to become Prime Minister. He managed all three."
What a perfect spokesman for the Dirty Dick Desmond's paid hacks, and by extension the spoilt trustafarians of Glibertaria USA.
Attorney|10.16.09 @ 12:41PM|#
Iron Rule No. __: If you subsidize something, you will get more of it.
Warty|10.16.09 @ 12:44PM|#
Shut the fuck up, Lonewacko.
luther, welcome to the blog. Shut the fuck up.
|10.16.09 @ 12:48PM|#
I dunno Warty, that was kind of funny. I didn't understand it, but it made me snicker.
John Tagliaferro|10.16.09 @ 12:46PM|#
I, for one, am glad that Reason did not begin showing full frontal nudity with this story.
|10.16.09 @ 1:04PM|#
He's got mad Bojangles moves, though. Something tells me ol' Jean-Luc is gonna be juuuuust fine.
|10.16.09 @ 1:02PM|#
How can Picard be homeless? He could:
1) Live on the holodeck as Dixon Hill
2) Create a home with the replicator
3) Live in Troi's huge ass
4) Join the Borg, become Locutus, and be king
5) Any matter of other options
|10.16.09 @ 1:05PM|#
She's a space vampire, dude. That's like living with a chick with a lot of tattoos. You know what I mean.
|10.16.09 @ 1:08PM|#
I understand you're just using an analogy, but I saw the movie. She has no tattoos.
|10.16.09 @ 1:12PM|#
Your ignorance of transvaginal tattooing is embarrassing in the extreme.
And you call yourself a scientist.
|10.16.09 @ 1:15PM|#
You fool! I was able to examine her without hindrance in that film--there were no tattoos of any kind.
|10.16.09 @ 1:19PM|#
What is it with you and movie/TV recommendations today? Are you gunning for Roger Ebert's job?
|10.16.09 @ 1:32PM|#
Episiarch tattooed his internal organs with radium ink in order to flirt with X-ray technicians.
|10.16.09 @ 1:35PM|#
I watched those guys in the Sneak Previews days. They bestrode the critical world like a colossus back then.
|10.16.09 @ 1:06PM|#
I curse you Epi to an eternity of Molly Ivins reading for besmerching that glorious woman.
|10.16.09 @ 1:23PM|#
It's a reality show about bridal lip-waxers in Athens. It's a big day for those girls, you see, and the last minute efforts of the 20 person staff to make her look like she doesn't have a mustache on her wedding day makes for gripping TV.
|10.16.09 @ 1:21PM|#
There is nothing funny about rape on the high seas. Moby Dick has a whole new meaning for me now.
MP|10.16.09 @ 1:09PM|#
From the article:
"12,000 people died in Britain during the Great Smog of December 1952"
What? Here's the Wiki entry. Definitely my new factoid of the day.
|10.16.09 @ 1:21PM|#
You know what would be funny? To reshoot a TOS episode with Patrick Stewart playing Kirk. And to shoot a TNG episode with Shatner playing Picard.
John Tagliaferro|10.16.09 @ 1:24PM|#
Should they use the new fancy Enterprise for TOS or the old clunky one?
|10.16.09 @ 1:24PM|#
Quit fucking with spacetime, ProL. A womanizing Picard and an Earl Grey swigging Kirk would trigger a series of events in which... we were never born.
|10.16.09 @ 1:26PM|#
John,
No. All the same, just the switch in actors.
Dagny,
I'm temporally loose.
|10.16.09 @ 1:26PM|#
Dude, they already did the Tribble shit on DS9. You're just asking for trouble.
|10.16.09 @ 1:28PM|#
Not the same. This is a study in acting technique. Also, Shatner is actually more French than Stewart, opening up the prospect of a Picard with a French rather than an English accent.
John Tagliaferro|10.16.09 @ 1:39PM|#
Like his famous flubbed sabotage line, with him saying it's a French word?
|10.16.09 @ 2:09PM|#
I know all about sabotage. But it's a fact that Shatner speaks fluent French (he's from Quebec). Maybe all the English speaking he was forced to do in taping Star Trek messed him up?
Oh, and he also speaks Esperanto.
Tim Cavanaugh|10.16.09 @ 1:21PM|#
The U.K. already has a solution to this problem: Just have squads of teenagers wearing long johns, combat boots, big jock straps and bowler hats beat up bums wherever they find them.
John Tagliaferro|10.16.09 @ 1:22PM|#
That was a great solution until Thatcher came in and ruined everything!
|10.16.09 @ 1:24PM|#
I'm so disappointed that the UK didn't actually turn out that way. I blame Mary Steenburgen.
|10.16.09 @ 1:32PM|#
Are you saying that you prefer the UK as it actually is to the UK of Anthony Burgess and/or Stanley Kubrick?
Richard|10.16.09 @ 1:24PM|#
All of these "disabled" British people started turning up about the same time Thatcher cut back on regular welfare. The British government just started paying the same people out of a different pocket.
Morris|10.16.09 @ 1:33PM|#
Ah, another of reason' impeccable right-wing moonbat news source:
From Wikipedia: "The Daily Express has a reputation for consistently printing conspiracy theories based on the death of Princess Diana as front page news, earning it the nickname, the Daily Ex-Princess; this is often satirised in Private Eye, the newspaper being labelled the Diana Express or the Di'ly Express, possibly due to Desmond's close friendship with regular Eye target Mohamed Fayed. [23] Even on July 7, 2006, the anniversary of the London bombings (used by most other newspapers to publish commemorations) the front page was given over to Diana. This tendency was also mocked on Have I Got News for You when on November 6, 2006, the day other papers reported the death sentence given to Saddam Hussein on their front pages, the Express led with “SPIES COVER UP DIANA 'MURDER'”. According to The Independent "The Diana stories appear on Mondays because Sunday is often a quiet day."[
I'll bet Gillespie subscribes.
|10.16.09 @ 1:46PM|#
Nice ad hominem Morris.
Care to deal with any of the actual points made in the post?
¢|10.16.09 @ 1:34PM|#
The British government just started paying the same people out of a different pocket.
Bums and governments are similarly wily.
anonymous|10.16.09 @ 1:37PM|#
I know someone that handles disability claims for Social Security. It isn't much better here -- it's remarkable how many people found out they were "disabled" when the economy went in the shitter and they got laid off. That said, that's claims filed, not necessarily approved.
|10.16.09 @ 1:57PM|#
Columnist Leo McKinstry quotes former Prime Minister Lord Rosebery, who in 1908, said: “The state invites us every day to lean upon it. I seem to hear the wheedling and alluring whisper, ‘Sound you may be. We bid you to be a cripple.”
Doesn't quoting somebody claiming this was going on in 1908 undercut the columnist's claim that it's a product of the modern welfare state?
Abdul|10.16.09 @ 2:56PM|#
Maybe he should be on the dole. He looks like he's fallen and can't get up.
BakedPenguin|10.16.09 @ 4:27PM|#
I thought it was Terry Bradshaw at first, too.
Anything to get him off of Fox's NFL pre-game show.
|10.16.09 @ 5:44PM|#
Lamar,
Or give us the option of reading posts sequentially.
Adnotatiunculae bilicis delenda est.
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